Ar nDraiocht Fein (ADF): A Druid Fellowship The ADF is a legally recognized 501(C)3 Church, and the largest
Druid organization in America. ADF
has open public celebrations of the Eight Holy Days of NeoPaganism and any
spiritual seeker is welcome to attend. For example, I attend the public
ceremonies of the Feather River
Grove in Chico, California. I've been an ADF member since 2007.
I find their liturgical cycle and rituals to be spiritually uplifting,
wholesome, life affirming, earth centered, ecologically positive, profound,
polytheistic, and open minded.

Book of
Pagan Prayer. By Ceisiwr Serith. San Francisco, California, Weiser Books, 2002.
Notes, annotated bibliography, appendices, 286
pages. ISBN: 1578632552. VSCL.
Begins with an essay titled "Why and How We Pray" (68 pages) and then a
collection of over 500 prayers for NeoPagans.

Order of Bards Ovates and Druids.
The largest Druid organization in the world. A complete training program
in print and audio versions, discussion groups, library, extensive resources.
I am a member of this Order as a Bardic Grade student.
The OBOD celebrates the Eight Holy Days of NeoPaganism.
I find their liturgical cycle and rituals to be
spiritually uplifting, wholesome, life affirming, earth centered, ecologically
positive, profound, polytheistic, and open minded. OBOD is more orientated
towards Celtic spirituality.

The
Solitary Druid: A Practitioner's Guide. By Robert Lee (Skip) Ellison.
New York, Kensington Pub. Co,., Citadel Press, 2005. Index,
bibliography, appendices, 262 pages. ISBN: 0806526750. VSCL.
Reverend Ellison has been the Archdruid of Ar nDraiocht Fein (ADF) and Dean of Divination and Beast Mastery -
The Grey School of Wizardry. A solitary ritual for the Autumnal Equinox is
provided by Rev. Ellison on pp. 187-192

Solitary
Witch: The Ultimate Book of Shadows for the New Generation. By Silver
Ravenwolf. St. Paul, Minnesota, 2005. Notes, bibliography, appendices, 590
pages. ISBN: 0738703192. VSCL.

The
Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess.
Rituals, invocations, exercises, and magic. By Starhawk. 10th
Anniversary
Edition, Revised and updated. Bibliography, index, 288 pages. VSCL.
ISBN: 0062508148. A very influential work on Goddess worship and
pagan religious practices.

The Spirit of Gardening
3,400 quotes, poems, sayings, and ideas about gardening, gardens, and the Green
Way. Materials organized by 140 topics; and a fully indexed collection
with a search engine. Online since 1999. Over 6MB of text.
Compiled by Michael P. Garofalo.

11. Working and meditating in the
garden is an important
facet of my spiritual path. I need to regularly reconnect with the earth
and the autumn season outdoors. I live in Red Bluff, California, USDA Zone 9,
Northern Hemisphere. My
late September
gardening chores might be quite different from yours, depending upon where
you live. Tend your garden daily. Water your garden each
day. Weed your vegetable garden. Harvest squash, tomatoes, peppers
and other vegetables from your garden each day. Review your own lists of chores for
August and
September, and act
accordingly.

12. Read about Mabon, Alban Elfed, the Autumnal
Equinox Celebration, and late-summer harvest celebrations around the world. Add notes and links to books, magazines, and webpages on the
subject. See my bibliography and links above.
Visit your local public library or college library to obtain access to books, media and
magazines on the subject. Study about ancient Indo-European religions.
I update my Months webpages on
August and
September.

13. Add some appropriate Mabon, Alban Elfed, Autumnal Equinox, or
September songs, chants, prayers, reflections, invocations, or
poems to your Neo-Pagan Craft Journal, Book of Shadows,
blog, website,
or Ritual Handbook. Write
in your personal journal. Most spiritual seekers keep a notebook, journal
or log as part of their experimental, creative, magical and experiential work.

14. Stay at home. Improve your home, backyard, or garden. Eliminate long driving trips. Do you
really need to "Go" anywhere? Do you really need to fly by airplane to
another country? Explore your backyard, neighborhood, local community,
nearby city, county wide area, regional area within 100 miles. Visit a
local "sacred site." For us, for example, this could be
Mt. Shasta, the
headwaters spring of the Sacramento River in Mt. Shasta City, the Sacramento
River at Woodson Bridge Park, a long walk in the forest below nearby Mt. Lassen,
sitting on the shore of Whiskeytown Lake, sitting in my backyard in the
moonlight, or visiting a beautiful church or college or park that is nearby.
Watch a DVD on a spiritual subject, sacred place, or inspirational topic.
Learn more about your local
environment.

15. Read solitary or group rites for Mabon available in books and
webpages (see above). Create your own ritual for Mabon.
Practice the ritual. Conduct the ritual at a convenient time for you, or
your family and/or friends, as close to the day of the autumnal equinox as
possible. Attend a public Mabon ritual of a
local NeoPagan group.

"J. G. Frazer in The Golden Bough notes the pagan origin
of Christmas: “It was a custom of the heathen to celebrate on the 25th December
the birthday of the sun, at which they kindled lights in token of festivity.
Accordingly when the doctors of the Church perceived that the Christians had a
leaning to this festival, they took counsel and resolved that the true Nativity
should be solemnised on that day … Augustine exhorts his Christian brethren not
to celebrate that solemn day like the heathen on account of the sun, but on
account of him who made the sun.” (p. 472). Frazer argues (pp. 833 & 842) “If
the heathen of ancient Europe celebrated, as we have good reason to believe, the
season of Midsummer with a great festival of fire, of which the traces have
survived in many places, it is natural to suppose that they should also have
observed with similar rites the corresponding season of Midwinter; for Midsummer
and Midwinter, the summer solstice and the winter solstice, are the two great
turning points in the sun’s apparent course through the sky, and from the
standpoint of primitive man nothing might seem more appropriate than to kindle
fires on earth at the two moments when the fire and heat of the great luminary
in heaven begin to wane or to wax … Indeed with respect to Midwinter celebration
of Christmas we are left to conjecture; we know from the express testimony of
the ancients that it was instituted by the church to supersede an old heathen
festival of the birth of the sun, which was apparently conceived to be born
again on the shortest day of the year, after which his light and heat were seen
to grow till they attained their full maturity at Midsummer … In modern
Christendom the ancient fire-festival of the winter solstice appears to survive,
or to have survived down to recent years, in the old custom of the Yule log.”"The definition of a Harvest Moon is: the
full moon closest to the fall equinox. The Harvest Moon was thus named because it rises within a half-hour of when the sun sets. In early days, when farmers
had no tractors, it was essential that they work by the light of the moon to bring in the harvest. This moon is the fullest moon of the year. When you gaze at it, it looks very large and gives a lot of light throughout the entire night. No other lunar spectacle is as awesome as the Harvest Moon."
-
The Midwinter Festival of Yule

"Smoke hangs like haze over harvested fields,
The gold of stubble, the brown of turned earth
And you walk under the red light of fall
The scent of fallen apples, the dust of threshed grain
The sharp, gentle chill of fall.
Here as we move into the shadows of autumn
The night that brings the morning of spring
Come to us, Lord of Harvest
Teach us to be thankful for the gifts you bring us ..."- Autumn
Equinox Ritual